Chapter 32: Finding Forever: Chapter 31

“Ineed you,” Cade groaned that night as he stepped into the apartment.

Fern, who was sitting at the round dining room table going through her course curriculum, looked up in alarm at the dramatic entrance.

She was on her feet seconds later, as she took in her husband’s unusually pale complexion and the dazed pain in his eyes.

“Cade,” she admonished. “You really need to start wearing your glasses more. Get on the bed this time, not the couch, the oils aren’t great for the fabric.”

This wasn’t the first time he’d come home with a raging headache. And where before he would stoically have endured it silently, these days, he came straight home seeking solace from Fern. One evening he’d simply sat on the couch beside her and dropped his head in her lap, eyes silently pleading with her to make the pain stop.

She sometimes had a sneaking suspicion that a few of the headaches weren’t truly headaches… especially since those sessions had a way of turning into something else altogether. She was starting to recognize the fake—horny Cade—headaches from the real ones though and this one was definitely real.

He obediently made his way to the bedroom, his head and shoulders stiff with pain.

“Strip down to your underwear,” she called out from behind him, knowing from experience that he was going to fall asleep and that it was better if he was comfortable.

She retrieved water and aspirin from the kitchen and followed him to the room. He was already lying prone on the bed. Face buried in a pillow; powerful arms raised above his head.

Fern was wearing a pair of drawstring cotton shorts and a baggy T-shirt. She tied her hair up in a loose knot and padded to the bed.

“Cade take these.”

He groaned again, and took the painkillers and water from her, barely opening his eyes as he did so. She winced in sympathy, and set the bottle aside before, straddling his back and going to work. It didn’t take long before he was fast asleep, and she settled down in the dip beside him, snuggling against his big, warm body as she fell asleep as well.

Fern woke a couple of hours later to her husband kissing and nuzzling her face.

She stretched and smiled, her eyes still closed.

“How’re you feeling?” she asked.

“Better, thank you,” he whispered, his lips finding the corner of her mouth and dropping a soft kiss.

“I’m serious, Cade, you have to start wearing your glasses more. Or permanently. Maybe you need a different prescription, when did you last have your eyes checked?”

He shrugged in unconcern and yawned, his hand kneading her butt, before stroking up over her back, his palm sliding over the bare skin of her back beneath the T-shirt.

He was hard, she could feel him throbbing against her thigh through his underwear.

“I don’t need new glasses when I have you to help me keep the headaches under control,” he whispered, his hand finding its way to the summit of her breast and stealing her breath away when he rolled her nipple between the knuckles of his index and middle finger. She gasped involuntarily and arched into his touch.

“I’m not a frikking Tylenol,” she protested, when his words finally registered. He chuckled unrepentantly, the sound smothered against her throat, where his mouth was currently exploring.

“My father came into the office today,” he told her after planting one last kiss at the corner of her mouth.

“He did? I didn’t even know he was in the country.”

“He apologized. About the name thing.”

Fern reluctantly pushed against his shoulders and reached over to the side table to switch on the bedside lamp.

“Tell me everything,” she murmured. He groaned and released her, flipped over onto his back, his huge erection making a mockery of the boxer briefs trying to contain it.

He placed his palms over his face and took a moment.

She sat up and dragged her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them as she watched him.

“Nothing much to tell, really. What you said at dinner that night, resonated with him. And confirmed a few of his own long-held beliefs.” He sat up too and told her about the talk he’d had with his father. It sounded like their conversation had been long overdue.

“How do you feel about it?” she asked.

“Grateful.” His lean stomach and taut abs flexed distractingly as he rearranged himself to face her more fully. “You did this Fern. I was harboring all this resentment and didn’t even realize it. If not for you, we would all simply have carried on like this. I would have remained emotionally distant from my siblings, from my father, and while we all knew it wasn’t as it should be, none of us knew how to fix it. Thank you.”

“You love one another, I’m sure you would have figured it out eventually, Cade,” she told him and he laughed, the sound carrying not a trace of humor.

“You place a lot more faith in us than we deserve, Fern.” She smiled and ran her palm over his stubbled jaw.

“I’m glad that you and your father had that talk, Cade.”

He caught the hand on his jaw and dragged it to his mouth to drop a kiss in her palm.

Fern chewed the inside of her cheek pensively, before sighing.

“I have something to tell you too,” she confessed. “And I think you’re going to be angry.”

“Why would you think that?” She licked her lips and his eyes hungrily followed the movement of her tongue. Belatedly recalling his fascination with her mouth, she snapped her fingers in front of his face to recapture his wandering attention.

“My eyes are up here, mister,” she admonished, and his gray eyes lit with amusement at her words.

“Sorry,” he said and she rolled her eyes.

“Okay, so Granger has been pestering Cyrus for a meeting with me.”

Every trace of amusement fled from his face and eyes in seconds.

“No. Absolutely not.” His voice was adamant, forged in steel, and his eyes had frosted over.

“Well, see, the thing is… it’s not up to you, Cade. It’s my decision. And I’ve already told Cyrus yes. The meeting has been set up for tomorrow morning.”

“When did Cyrus inform you of Abernathy’s demands?” Cade asked, his voice lowering dangerously and she sucked her lower lip into her mouth before shrugging.

“On Monday.”

“You sat on this for two days before telling me?”

“I wasn’t going to tell you at all, because I knew you were going to get all unreasonable and overprotective about it.”

“For fuck’s sake, Fern,” he swore, running his palm over his freshly shorn hair. “I don’t trust him, and I don’t want you anywhere near him.”

“I understand, Cade,” she appeased, her hand going to his hard, thickly-muscled thigh to give a reassuring squeeze. “But Cyrus will be there, as will his associates. As well as Granger’s attorneys. We won’t be alone. But I want to see him. It’s my moment, but I want you there. I need you there. As my husband. To support me, not to protect me. I want Granger to know that I can take care of myself, despite the years he stole from me, despite how he attempted to erode my self-confidence and self-esteem. I want him to see that I survived him and that I’m thriving without him. Do you understand?”

His eyes had gone dark with suppressed emotion but he nodded.

“I understand and I’m so fucking proud of you. I’ll be there tomorrow as your biggest cheerleader. Always.” His voice was shaky. “But Fern, I have to tell you something too. Something I know will likely come out at your meeting with Abernathy and I don’t want you blindsided by it.”

Fern waited, nervous now, not certain she was ready to hear what he wanted to confess. Not when he looked so sick at the prospect of whatever he was about to divulge.

His throat bobbed as he swallowed.

“After you told me what Abernathy did to you and your friend… I was punch a wall levels of pissed off. No sorry, that’s too mild compared to what I was feeling. It was more punch his nose into the back of his skull levels of blind rage. I wanted to hunt him down and fuck him up for what he did to you.” He snuck another nervous look at her. “I stayed up that night and formulated a plan to destroy him. To raze everything he’d built all the way down to the ground. So—uh—that’s what I did.”

She blinked at him in confusion as she tried to make sense of his words.

“What do you mean that’s what you did? What did you do? What do you mean?”

“He’s bankrupt. I did to him what he did to your friend. And I did it in your name.”

“What?” she asked faintly. “You did what? In just two months?”

“I was… driven. And to be honest, his so-called empire was a house of cards. Without your money keeping him afloat, it was just a matter of tugging on a few strategic cards to bring it all crashing down.”

She gaped at him in disbelief.

“And you did it in my name? What does that mean?”

“Everything I gained went into a trust for you. To recoup what he stole from you. That’s also how I got the deed to your friend’s shop back.”

He kept his gaze fixed on her face, clearly trying to get a read on her mood. But since Fern herself wasn’t sure how she felt about this, she didn’t think he was getting much from her face. Except maybe shock. And disbelief.

“So, I think he’s going to be a lot angrier than you’re expecting him to be.”

“Oh, I was expecting him to be plenty angry,” she said, waving her hand dismissively. “After all, I’m having his arse indicted.”

Her eyes widened and her hand flew to her mouth before she spoke again, voice wobbling and muffled by her hand.

“I’m having him indicted and you just stripped him of his only chance of a decent legal team.”

Cade couldn’t tell what she was thinking or feeling. He knew that he had overreached. After what she’d just said about needing to prove to Abernathy how well she was doing without him, Cade worried she’d feel that his interference had somehow diminished her own achievements. He should have discussed it all with her first. Gauged her reaction. She wasn’t ruthless. Utter destruction wasn’t her style.

“And you say you did that for me?” she repeated, as if she wasn’t certain she’d heard or understood that part clearly.

God, she probably hated him. Resented him for ruining her moment. For undermining her. Cade couldn’t blame her really. It had been an uncharacteristically impulsive decision, powered by blind rage. But he couldn’t even blame impulse. Not really. He could have backed off at any time, but he hadn’t stopped… Days, weeks, months he’d had to change his mind but he’d pushed on, fueled by the memory of Fern crying in his arms, still so very heartbroken over something that fucker had done to her nearly ten years ago.

Now the chickens had come home to roost and his wife was staring at him with huge eyes and trembling lips as she tried to understand what he’d done.

“I—” The word got stuck in his throat and he coughed to remove it and start again. “I did it for you. The way you cried that night, Fern… I know it’s not an excuse but I couldn’t fix what he’d done, so I set out to make him feel some measure of how he’d made you feel.”

“Oh Cade,” she whimpered, her voice going small and tremulous. “That’s just the sweetest thing anybody has ever done for me.”

Uh…

What?

He’d been bracing for the worst and now had no idea what to do with all the residual tension coursing through his body.

“You’re not angry?”

“No, of course not.”

“Why not?”

She laughed at the question and wrapped her arms around his neck.

“Do you want me to be?”

“No… no. I just thought, I mean, it’s a lot, right?”

“It’s perfect. Better even than the ugly car/massive bodyguard combo you got me for Christmas.” He chuckled at that.

“Ian is a driver not a bodyguard,” he corrected for the hundredth time since he’d arranged for her driver and car.

“You and I both know that’s a lie,” she scoffed, before tightening her arms around his neck. “Now can we get back on subject please?”

“What were we talking about?” he asked breathlessly, as she clambered into his lap.

“We were about to get into an in-depth discussion about how grateful I am to you.”

“Aah, yes of course.” He smiled as her lips met his, and he found a satisfactory way to rid himself of his residual tension after all.

Granger was late.

They’d already been waiting for nearly fifteen minutes by the time his assistant messaged to say that they’d been “unavoidably detained.”

“The same bullshit amateur power play tactics he pulled on my dad and me that weekend we came to his house.”

“The weekend we got married you mean?” Fern reminded archly. She looked relaxed, with one hand neatly folded on top of the other on the table.

Cade grinned at the reminder.

“That very one. Aah, good times,” he intoned on a chuckle and she slanted him a fond look. He was in a very good mood today, despite grumbling about the meeting this morning.

They’d had an amazing night last night. Making slow, sweet love into the early hours of the morning. Fern had had to physically bite her tongue a few times to stop herself from blurting out that she loved him.

Still, despite that one bitter note, it had been one of their best nights together. She was very close to throwing caution to the wind and telling him she wanted to make this arrangement permanent. He cared about her. She knew that, his actions all confirmed that he did. Maybe the love would follow.

Still, was it fair that she settled?

She was so deeply engrossed in her thoughts that she didn’t realize the door to Cyrus’s boardroom had opened until her legal team all leaped to their feet.

Cade however, continued to man-sprawl insouciantly in his chair. It was the most aggressive form of passive aggressiveness she’d ever had the privilege to witness.

Granger entered the room like he owned it, his expensive suit hanging off his skeletal frame, his skin pallid, and that sickly, insincere smile that she’d always hated on his thin lips.

His eyes lit up almost avariciously when he spotted Fern—who had also remained seated—but his face froze when he noticed Cade beside her.

“I thought this was to be a meeting with my stepdaughter alone. How am I to establish if she’s being coerced, when that man is sitting right beside her? Possibly intimidating her into giving the answers he wants her to give?”

Fern sighed and—despite his still nonchalant pose—she felt Cade tense beside her. Her hand dropped to his thigh and squeezed, begging for restraint and the tension left his body.

“Mr. Hawthorne is here merely as an observer and to lend support to his wife,” Cyrus said. “Please have a seat, if you don’t mind, Mr. Abernathy.”

It was framed like a polite request but it was clearly an order.

Granger slanted the attorney a look of acute dislike—a look that spoke of a history of unpleasant encounters between the two men—and sat down directly across from Fern. A couple of his attorneys sat on his left. And Richard Wilson oozed into the room to take up the position on Granger’s left.

“My dear,” Richard said, the sound of his too smooth voice sending an unpleasant shudder down her spine as it always had. “How lovely it is to see you again. I’ve missed you so much.”

His words made her frown in confusion. She hadn’t shared more than a few dozen words with the man in the past.

“Richard,” she greeted warily.

“Is that bastard really going to stay?” Granger asked, tilting his jaw toward Cade, who sat hand over fist and watching them over the top of his knuckles.

“I’d prefer it if my husband stayed, yes,” Fern stated calmly.

“We can’t talk with him here,” Richard said and Fern’s frowning gaze touched on his face again.

“I don’t really have anything to say to you anyway,” she said and Cade made a choking sound in the back of his throat. She threw him a warning glance that he merely returned with a raised brow.

“Fern, I know you’re still angry with me, but this has gone on long enough,” Richard told her in a whispered aside. A whisper loud enough to carry to every pair of ears in the room.

“What?” Fern was completely mystified by his strange behavior.

“Dickie”—Cade snorted at the nickname her stepfather had used and Fern didn’t even bother sending him a quelling gaze this time, because it was a ridiculous name—“has told me about the argument you two had the night you ran off with that man, Fern.”

“I’m sorry, what now?” Fern asked in confusion, her eyes on her stepfather’s sly smiling face.

“I admit that I didn’t respond very well to the news of your pregnancy, Fern,” Richard said, his gaze could almost pass as sincere and imploring. “But you know I would have come to my senses by the following day. I just needed some time to let it sink in.”

Fern’s jaw dropped as she finally understood what they were doing. She slid an incredulous glance at her husband, only to find him watching Richard with a speculative look on his face.

Surely, he wasn’t buying into this load of bullshit?

He shot her a dark, inscrutable look, before diverting his brooding glance back to Richard.

“What are you talking about?” Fern whispered in horror.

“You can come home, Fern. Dickie here is willing to be a father to his child and everything can go back to normal.”

Cade’s knuckles had whitened as his hand tightened over his fist. His face was tense and his eyes stormy with rage as he pressed his knuckles against his lips.

Fern was silent for a long, long moment and then she laughed. Slowly clapping her hands as she watched her stepfather’s smug face go slack with shock.

“Oh bravo, that was magnificent, if somewhat desperate. Did you two really think that nonsense was going to work? Even if Cade believed you, which by the way, Cade… do you?”

He lifted his mouth from his knuckles and gave her a quick, hard little grin, his eyes glinting with something that looked like pride.

“Not on your fucking life, sweetheart.”

“As I was saying… even if Cade believed you, nothing on this earth would ever compel me to go anywhere with you, Granger. I’m never going back. And you’re never getting your greedy, grubby paws on my money again.”

“You ungrateful little bitch.” Granger suddenly dropped all pretense, shedding the concerned stepfather routine the way a snake would shed its skin. “After all I’ve done for you, this is how you repay me?”

“What have you done for me, Granger? Kept me imprisoned and isolated for over a decade, destroyed my only friend’s entire family, and gaslighted me… all so that you could betray my mother’s trust and steal from me! You’ll forgive me if I find myself a little light on gratitude right now.”

“What about your sisters?” Wow, he was really clutching at straws now. “This is affecting their lives too. Don’t you care about them?”

“My sisters? Just to be clear, you are referring to the same women who used to send peanuts in my care packages, despite knowing I’m deathly allergic to them, right? Who took every opportunity to mock and ridicule me? Who stole my mother’s jewelry and clothes after she died? Because they can rot in hell right next to you for all I care.”

She gave him a frigid little smile.

“I’m the one who approached Cade that weekend, Granger. I offered him myself and Lambecrete up on a platter, because I could see he was a million times the man you are. I was happy to do it and I would choose him over you any day of the week.”

“You really hate me so much you’d see me in prison? Bankrupted and destroyed by that bastard you married?”

She got up, braced her hands on the table, and looked him dead in the eye.

“Yes.”

It was the most satisfying moment of her life. She nodded regally at Cade who pushed to his feet right on cue.

“Ready to go, sweetheart?” he asked.

“Yes, I’m done with this.”

He snaked an arm around her waist and she leaned into him just a little, grateful for his support, a little giddy now that the adrenaline was wearing off.

Cade led her from the room and released her waist once she was able to stand without swaying.

“Okay?” he asked gently.

“So okay,” she told him with a grin.

“You were fucking magnificent, sweetheart.”

He steered her to the five steps that led down from the law firm’s reception area to the bank of elevators that would take them down to street level, but just as they reached them, there was a commotion behind them.

“You do not just get to walk out on me like that, Fern!” It was Granger. “Not after everything I’ve done for you.”

He grabbed hold of Fern’s arm, his grip bruising, and Cade immediately got between them, shielding Fern from the older man.

“Back the fuck off, Abernathy,” he warned, his voice filled with menace. He was twice as broad as Granger, and a good few inches taller. And Fern, fearing that the altercation would escalate into blows, violently wrenched her arm from her stepfather’s grasp only to find herself teetering on the edge of the step.

Cade heard her gasp. It was a sound he would never forget for the rest of his life. A small, shocked inhalation of air, filled with absolute fear. He swung his head toward her and saw her lose her balance. She jerked her arm out of Abernathy’s grip, stepped backward, and her left foot hit nothing but air.

Her eyes met his in that instant, lit with sheer terror as she understood that she was going to fall. He reached for her, but his hands missed her by a fraction of an inch as she went down.

He shoved Abernathy violently away from him, only vaguely aware of Cyrus, yanking the man backward—and dove after Fern. But it was too late, she landed in an awkward heap at the bottom of those steps.

Just five steps. Not very steep, but potentially catastrophic if you were falling backward, without warning, or any means of stopping yourself.

“No,” he muttered, dropping heavily to his knees beside her too still, limp body. “Nonononono… Fern. Open your eyes, sweetheart. Come on.”

He lifted a hand to her face but Cyrus’s harsh, commanding voice stopped him.

“Don’t move her. We don’t know what she might have injured. You could make it worse.”

“Is she breathing?” Cade asked in a choked voice, rocking slightly as he fought the urge to touch her. “I can’t tell if she’s breathing, Cyrus. Please.”

Cyrus knelt beside him.

“She’s breathing, son. She probably just has a little bump on her head, and she’ll be right as rain tomorrow.”

Cyrus didn’t sound very convincing and Cade sobbed. A choked sound that he couldn’t quite control.

“I can’t lose her, Cyrus. I can’t… I can’t. I only just found her.”

“Don’t think like that, Cade, come on. I think it’s probably okay to hold her hand, talk to her. Let her know you’re here. Okay? The ambulance is on its way.”

Cade nodded and gently gathered her small, limp hand up in his. He lifted it to his cheek—which he only then discovered was wet with tears—and took solace in the fact that her skin was warm, alive to the touch.

She’d hit her head. He’d seen it happen. Seen it bounce off the tiled floor. Heard the sickening thump of it. The damage that may have caused didn’t bear thinking about… and yet it was all his brain seemed to want to focus on. How bad it could be. How much worse it could get.

And through it all the thoughts spinning chaotically through his mind in an endless loop were…

God help me, I love her. I love them.